Triberg: The Black Forest

On Friday, we drove an hour and a half to a town called Triberg. The hour and a half was so much nicer than the 6 hour drives we have been doing. It was very much needed! Triberg is in the Black Forest. From my understanding, this is where the Cuckoo Clocks were all started. Now it is famous for Cuckoo Clocks. So this is where we started:
The House of 1000 Clocks. Steve said it was the coolest store he has ever been in. We really liked the bear on the outside. The one on the rope was moving up and down.


Their clocks were amazing! We have seen them a lot of places. But it was cool to see them in the town that they come from. You will all have to come and see mine when we get home, so you can see what I am talking about. They are real Cuckoo Clocks. Some look like little houses, others are carved wood with leaves and crosses like the one above. We really like the house ones. After spending way too much money in that store, we headed across the street to see Germany's highest waterfall. I don't think that we saw how high the waterfall actually is. We climbed as high as we could with the stroller. I am not sure if it the fall kept going up the whole trail or not. The part we saw was amazing! It was really beautiful!
It si kind of funny that this waterfall doesn't have a name. The signs just say wasserfalle, which means waterfall. All the pamphlet just call it "Germany's Highest Waterfall" I just think it could use a cool name.

We continued walking along a trail to get to a little pond.

It was really cool to walk in the Black Forest. It was really kind of dark. It wasn't black, but dark. We looked at the town and saw that the sun was shining on it. It was bright! But we were in the shade the whole time. The sun was not getting to us. It was cool to see.Can you see the contrast? Pretty neat!

At the pond, there was a little park! We love to see parks! It is a great place to let Zack run around and have fun. Josh also loved the tetter-totter. He giggled the whole time!


We had a wonderful dinner a little cafe by the pond. Then we walked back to our car and headed to our hotel. When we got to the hotel that we had a reservation for, the receptionist told us there was a problem with our room. We asked about what the problem was. She said that it is already occupied. WHAT?! Since when did having a reservation mean that you don't have a room? She told us that they have a partner hotel that will have a room for us. She said that they had everything we needed and assured me it would be the same price and that I would still get my points. (I joined Best Western Rewards since their hotels are usually really nice over here and since we have been staying in a lot of hotels, why not get something out of it.) The receptionist gave us directions to the other hotel. We found it. The guy was super nice. He said that we are very lucky because he has one room available. But he didn't know that we had a baby. He did not have a crib. He also didn't have the view that the other hotel had. He did not have the adapters that the other hotel had (which explains my hair in the following picture. I had no curling iron and one bad dryer!). There were many things that we look for in a hotel that this one didn't have. But we stayed there anyway. We just needed a place to stay. The next morning we went to pay and check out. Steve pulled out his VISA and the man tells him that they don't accept credit cards. Well he don't just have 100+ euros on us. So we have to try to find an ATM. We go looking in town. We find one. It doesn't accept VISA. We go searching again. We found another one and yes it accepts VISA. We get our money. We return to the hotel and pay. This took quite a bet of time from our day. Yes we still did everything we had planned, but it was a huge inconvenience. Yes, I have emailed Best Western and asked what the definition of a reservation is. It doesn't seem like a huge thing now, but at the time it was really inconvenient and stressful. Anyway, we headed off to see the World's Largest Cockoo Clock.



It is pretty big! We also got to go inside of it and see all the gears and how a clock worked. It was really cool! When we were in there, the clock struck 11:00. The gears started moving so fast. One wheel particular. Then we saw the bird go out and Cockoo 11 times. It was awesome!